


Forever

by SweetPages



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Allusions to Suicide, Alternate Universe-Steve doesn't get frozen with the Valkyrie, Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers both need hugs, But they can hug each other so it's okay, F/M, M/M, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Set after Peggy's death, Steve lives a whole life with Peggy and has a family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 06:12:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7302757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetPages/pseuds/SweetPages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's lived an entire life, but he knows he can't be done.</p>
<p>If Steve has to live a million lives, it's okay. If Bucky's there, he can do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever

_“Well, if it’s with you Captain Rogers, I think I can manage to be married for the rest of my life.”_

_-_

_“I rather like the brick on the wall, don’t you? A brick wall indoors... It makes me think of London and Brooklyn, looking at it. And there’s a park not far… It might be perfect.”_

_-_

_“Darling, could you go and get a loaf of bread? I need to get to the office and I haven’t got time to stop.”_

_-_

_“He’s growing so fast you know. He’ll have no problem watching over his little sister. Not that she’ll need it, mind you, if she’s her mother’s daughter.”_

_-_

_“She says she wants to go and see some band of boys from Britain. I know boys from Britain, Steve. You’re going with her.”_

_-_

_“So you’ll always look this way? Or, at least as long as I’m around? Well, if that’s the case I can’t say I’m disappointed.”  
_

_-_

_“They make a happy couple. That’s all I want for them, you know.”  
_

_-_

_“She said it looks like salt and pepper, Steve, our own granddaughter. This isn’t what we spoil her for, is it? Oh for Queen and Country, I’ll have to get a wig at this rate…”_

_-_

_“Steve…”_

_-_

_“I love you darling.”_

 

* * *

He can’t sleep.

Misty blue eyes stare out ahead, taking in the muted navy-tinted hue of their dark room as the city keeps living, always going, outside their window.

He’s warm, his metabolism tends to help with that, as does the body laying just behind his. Yet he feels his skin prickle, bumps raising along his arms. Maladies that even the serum can’t stop are plaguing him now. His eyes sting from being kept open for too long and from the memories that play behind them. His heart aches, and it moves up into his throat, strangling him.

He breathes deeply to dispel it, chest expanding, but it gets caught in his throat, and he sobs quietly. The warm body behind his shifts, sheets moving softly.

“Steve?”

His eyes fall shut, but he knows he can’t pretend to be asleep now.

A hand touches his bicep, and he opens them again and turns his head.

“What’s goin’ on?”

Bucky’s face gives away his concern. A little dimple is between his brows, a frown is on his lips, and his eyes are patient and honest and tentative all at once.

Steve manages to smile, because even though it still hurts, he can’t keep feeling sad while looking at this face.

Reaching up, his palm moves over Bucky’s cheek, thumb running over the soft skin on his temple and into his hair.

“Just can’t sleep.” His voice is gruff and a little thick. He watches that dimple gain a twin.

Bucky hesitates before he speaks again, eyes moving from point to point on his face and lips slightly parted. Steve waits, knowing that it still takes time for Bucky to trust himself, for him to know what he really wants to say.

His face smoothes, and his lips quirk into a teasing smile.

“Want me to sing you a lullaby?”

Steve smiles back at that, something small, but it makes Bucky look grateful all the same.

He speaks up again, hand moving to rest on Steve’s chest. “You get a nightmare?”

“No…kind of.”

Bucky looks confused, the kind of confused that begs an explanation.

“What do you- What, you have a nightmare and a good dream at the same time? Did you dream of getting free pie for the rest of your life, so long as you spent an hour every day getting ragged on by Stark?”

Steve smiles softly as he stares up at Bucky. 

“No. I was thinking.” 

The look of understanding that appears on Bucky’s face lets him know he probably won’t have to say much more.

“About Peggy?” 

He nods.

“And stuff,” he replies.

“And stuff, huh?" 

A strong but gentle hand moves toward his face, then careful fingers are sliding through his hair. Bucky's thumb moves up to stroke slowly over Steve’s cheek as his pale blue eyes watch the movement.

“I just…” Steve starts, but ends up keeping quiet. Instead he lets his own hand move downward, to Bucky’s chest and then over Bucky’s heart, feeling it beat through his skin and bones, warm and solid.

“Miss her?" 

Bucky’s voice is soft as their eyes meet again.

“Yeah…I miss all of it sometimes.” He breathes deep again, then lets it out slowly through his nose. “Things now are just…they’re different. Feels like I’m dreaming sometimes, like I’ll wake up and be back in some other time. Maybe back with you, before the war, or back with Peggy and the kids.” A pause, a long moment of their quiet breathing and constant city noises playing in between. The noises he used to hear when he was young are so unlike the ones now, like an entirely different genre of music, a different beat driving the city. Even though he was there when they evolved into what they are now, was alive the whole time the world was changing, he still isn't used to it. But he got to be there for it all, got to have that life he'd yearned for at the end of the war. And now...

He looks at Bucky, his heart growing fond at the sight, and he feels a little guilty.

“Am I cheating?”

He gets a soft little laugh, like Bucky can't believe what he's saying, because of course he knows exactly what he's thinking. “No. Things just kind of happened this way. You and me…we’re not getting the same deal as everyone else.” Bucky smiles, but it’s hard and tight. “My deal was kind of crap…”

Steve can’t laugh at the quip, just keeps watching Bucky while an ache moves through his chest.

“…but it’s still not the same thing other people usually get. Yours isn’t either.”

Silence follows for a long moment, as he stares at where his hand rests over Bucky’s heart. Guilt builds up again, for a different reason, because he  _has_ lived a whole life, and now he gets to live another, but sometimes, he just... “I just feel so tired sometimes,” he says, because he's never admitted it aloud, but he's never been able to hide what he's feeling from Bucky.

When his eyes move up to meet Bucky’s, he instantly regrets his words. 

“If you…” Bucky starts, and then glances away. When he looks back at him Steve knows he’s trying hard to hide how miserable he is. “If you need to go-“ 

“No-“ He sits up immediately, clutching at the side of Bucky’s face with his other hand.

“It isn’t the same Steve, I know it, and this…all this ain’t natural, at least not like everyone else knows. Not like we’ve ever heard of before. You didn’t get a choice, either.”

“ _Bucky_ -“

“If it’s what you need to do, it’s alright. It’s okay.” Bucky’s hand moves to rest over his, soft smile on face. It’s laced with grief, until it breaks, and Bucky just looks stricken. “But…I’m sorry, but you gotta know that I’ll be right behind you-“

“ _No_.” He looks hard at him, into his eyes, that serious expression that’s gotten Bucky to really consider him countless times before. “I don’t want to.” His face softens, and his heart breaks some more (he’s always surprised, he never thinks it can break any more, until it does), when he sees the wetness in Bucky’s eyes. “I’m never gonna leave you. I can’t, and I don’t want to. If I have to live a million lives, it’s okay. If you’re there, I can do it.” 

Bucky’s eyes look like they're filling with tears, and it’s a sight Steve’s seen a few times before, but the desperation in them is something so new and so raw. Steve finds himself scared to his core.

“I’m always gonna miss her,” he continues, honest and sincere like he knows Bucky needs him to be. “and there are other parts I’ll miss, but…everyone goes through that, right?” He gives a little smile, reassuring. “Every hundred-year-old goes through that.”

A tear escapes and rolls down Bucky’s cheek, but he doesn’t move to rub it away like he’d do in the past. Instead he just watches Steve’s face, lips parted again in the way that lets Steve know he’s about to speak. “You don’t want to follow her?”

His chest constricts for the thousandth time in a century, and Peggy’s face flashes through his mind. Her laugh and touch. The brightness of her eyes. The many expressions hidden in her smile.

And then all at once that ache goes straight to the pit of his stomach, where it sits heavy like a ton of lead as he thinks about how when he’d gotten the chance to follow Bucky off that mountain he hadn’t taken it. Bucky hadn't gotten to live a life after he'd died. He'd lived a nightmare.

He pushes it all down, having dealt with the thought and the guilt hundreds of times over the course of his life and knowing that he’ll never, ever come to terms with it.

“No.”

Bucky wants to speak again, Steve knows it, but he can’t let him sit there any longer and think that he might lose him. So he leans forward, touching their heads together and wrapping his arms around him, hands grasping at his back. Bucky stills a little, then hands slowly move to clutch at him in turn.

“I might’ve lived a whole life, Buck,” he says, watching his eyes, the ones that he's known his whole messed up, stretched out lifetime. The ones that are still so, so dear. “But I know I can’t be done. You’re here, and I never, never want to leave you.” 

Bucky’s voice, when he speaks a moment later, is barely above a whisper. “Not even if we live to be a thousand?” 

He smiles, soft and relieved. “Not even then. You got me forever, Bucky Barnes.” 

Bucky bites his lip, and then huffs a laugh, something that lifts all the weight within him at once. “But what if I change my mind?”

He grins. “Well too bad.”

He kisses him then, not for the first time, and far from the last.

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this a while ago, when I got to thinking about what might happen with Bucky if Steve had gone on and lived a whole life with Peggy instead of being frozen. I couldn't help but feel like he might be insecure about the whole thing, since marrying someone and having a family and living an entire life with them is kind of a big deal. 
> 
> But of course, Bucky is a big deal to Steve, too.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the read! I love reading comments and feedback so please don't be shy! :)


End file.
